OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP™ SERIES
I took on a new client whom I had some business interactions with over time, so she was not a stranger to me. She needed an admin with an accounting background for her own growing business. I knew exactly who to place.
The fit looked perfect on paper. A referral. Strong experience. The right skill set for the role. Workflows were already documented from prior work, so I placed her and stepped back into a hands-off role. My client worked closely with the admin directly and often, daily in fact. While I wasn’t part of the day-to-day operations and communication, if a problem came up, it was mine to handle, not my client’s. That was the deal.
For a while, it worked. Really worked. My client loved her. Trusted her. The admin was even invited to in-person trainings, the kind of thing you only extend to someone who feels like part of the team. I felt really good about that.
Nothing about the workflow broke. She did excellent work. She followed the process. If you were grading this placement on execution alone, it was a clean pass.
Here’s the part execution can’t grade.
At some point, in conversation, I started noticing something. Small at first. My gut was sensing something, only I didn’t know what. Then it wasn’t small. During one of my team meetings with the admin, she told me that she wanted to work as a direct hire of my client instead of subcontracting through me. She gave me an ultimatum: let her go so my client could hire her directly with my blessing, or she’d quit and go work for her anyway. There was a waiting period for that in our contract, and she knew it. I assumed the admin had already discussed this with my client, so I called my client to talk it through. My client hadn’t heard any of it, and she was as shocked and upset as I was. What the admin didn’t know is that my client had already been thinking about hiring her, eventually. Just not yet, and not like this.
It turned out she’d been working both ends the whole time, planning her case to pitch my client, thinking it was a done deal, while pressuring me. After my client and I talked about it and how this happened, we decided to test the water. I would let the admin go, which I had intended to do at this point anyway, and we would wait to see what happened. And then, the moment the paperwork ending the contract was signed, the admin reached out to my client directly, on her own, unprompted, presenting her offer to work with my client directly. After all, she was a perfect fit.
That was the proof my client needed. She pulled the admin out entirely and told her she wouldn’t be hiring her now. Not in the future.
| The workflow held the entire time. The trust didn’t. And the workflow was never going to catch that, because it was never built to. |
Why “It’s Documented” Isn’t the Same as “It’s Safe”
Operational Foundation™ is where most founders think the job ends. Get the SOPs written, get the roles defined, get the handoffs clear, and the business runs itself.
It doesn’t. Documentation governs tasks. It doesn’t govern relationships, incentives, or the slow accumulation of trust between two people who talk to each other more often than you talk to either of them.
That’s what Operational Leadership™ actually protects against. Not “is the work getting done.” “Is anyone watching the parts of this relationship a workflow was never designed to see.”
| Gallup found 42% of employees who voluntarily leave a job say the exit was preventable. Most managers never got the chance to try, 45% of leavers said little was done in the three months before they walked to check in on how things were actually going. The absence isn’t an accident. Nobody built a structure to surface it. Source: Gallup, “42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored,” Corey Tatel & Ben Wigert, July 9, 2024 |
What Actually Went Wrong
Not the hire. She was qualified. Not the placement. By every objective measure, it was a good fit.
What was missing:
- No defined channel for early signals. There was exactly one thing I couldn’t have known, the kind of blind spot my client trusted wouldn’t become a problem. I found out about the tension “in conversation,” not through any structure built to surface it.
- No rhythm separate from performance. My check-ins with the client covered whether the work was good. Nothing was built to ask whether the relationship itself was healthy.
- No boundary named out loud. My client didn’t know the admin didn’t know she was already being considered for a future hire. That unspoken gap is exactly where an ultimatum gets room to grow.
What This Stage Actually Requires
Operational Leadership™ isn’t a personality trait or a title. It’s a small number of specific habits.
1. A recurring check-in that isn’t about output. Ask your client or team lead one question a workflow can’t answer: “How’s the relationship, not the task, going?” Do it on a schedule, not when something already feels off.
2. A named escalation path before you need one. Decide, in writing, who raises a concern and to whom, before the first sign of trouble. If the only way a problem reaches you is “in conversation,” you built a system with no fire alarm.
3. No unmonitored side channels. I let communication move outside the structure I’d normally insist on, against my own better judgment, because the client wanted it. That’s the one decision in this story I’d take back. A direct line between a client and a contractor also removes your ability to see what’s moving through it.
4. Say the quiet part out loud, on both sides. If a long-term outcome is being considered, a future hire, a promotion, an ownership stake, and the person involved doesn’t know it, that unspoken gap is where leverage plays get made. Name it early, or expect someone to test it.
Where This Isn’t You
This stage doesn’t apply to every business, and it’s worth being honest about that before you go looking for a problem you don’t have.
If you’re still fielding constant questions from your team and don’t have documented workflows yet, this isn’t your stage. Go back to Operational Foundation™ first. An accountability rhythm has nothing to hold onto without structure underneath it.
And if your team is small enough that you’re inside every relationship personally, day to day, you may not need a formal rhythm yet. You need one once the business has grown past your ability to notice a shift in conversation. That’s exactly what happened to me.
The Bottom Line
A workflow tells people what to do. It was never going to tell me a contractor was quietly building a case against her own placement. That’s not a documentation gap. That’s a leadership gap, and it’s the one Stage 3 exists to close.
| Good execution bought me time. It didn’t buy me safety. Those are different things, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake available at this stage. |
| Which stage is your business actually in? Take the Operations Ascension Ladder™ Assessment, a two minute questionnaire that tells you exactly where you stand and what to build next, before your next hire tests it for you. Take the Assessment done4u.vip |
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